Love, according to the Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, is a living, breathing thing, but for the life of me, I can never remember her name.

No matter how many times we meet, Love’s name just goes in one ear and out the other. She keeps coming around, though, always unannounced, and when she does, I stare, mute, a vague recognition in my eye, her name on the tip of my tongue, escaping me, only to arrive with the force of a hurricane after she has gone.

Perhaps, I think, if I could meet Love in a quieter place, where the din of society’s messages is hushed, I would see her and recall her name with ease, but society’s messages are everywhere there are people, even by the fireplace in the cozy living room on a snowy day, my adult daughter curled up on the couch, deep in a book.

Perhaps it would help if I used a mnemonic device. I might think of something that rhymes with Love. Or repeat the name three times. Maybe I could associate it with a color. But how would that work, I wonder. Love never looks the same way twice. What will prompt my memory in the absence of a constant?

I’ve finished my bowl of Mexican wedding soup. My son-in-law goes back for seconds. My daughter tells a joke about an architect, and my granddaughter delights in gumming and swallowing yet another meatball from the tray of her high-end highchair, and something within me stirs.

A moment later, I watch as my son-in-law takes a breath, purses his lips, and blows a cool breeze through my granddaughter’s downy hair, eliciting a squeal of delight.

And this time, I recognize her right away. “Oh, yes! Hello, Love,” I say. “It’s ever so nice to see you again!”

Tricia Bernard lives in Charlotte, NC

Question. When you walk out the door to run errands or shop, do you grab your wallet, the car fob and some cash? It’s the cash element that I’m curious about. Are baby boomers the last proponents of paying with cash? Sure seems that way when just about everyone is tapping their credit or debit cards at the check-out counter.

An Empower survey of American attitudes toward cash, indicated that 52% of respondents said cash was king, 49% said they felt safer with cash, and 27% said they carry cash with them every day.

If you’ve been overseas lately, you may have noticed that no one there is using cash. They hold their phone near the payment terminal in their favorite cafe, it beeps and they are out the door with their coffee.

According to CapitalOne, as of March 2025, 47.8% of American adults make NO cash purchases in a typical week. More than 63% expect a cashless future and globally, point-of-sale transactions were 85% cashless in 2024.

No-cash establishments are very common in Europe so it won’t be long before we see it here in the U.S. There is no law that requires businesses to accept cash and COVID ramped up the trend to go cashless for hygienic reasons (the filthy lucre argument).

For baby boomers, the lack of control over their spending may be the biggest disadvantage to going cashless, along with the lack of privacy regarding how you’re using your money, and those pesky data breaches that keep cropping up to expose us to fraud. Sometimes you just want to buy something without anyone keeping tabs on where your money is going.

It just might be the tactile experience of handling cash that still makes it attractive to boomers. You can count it and rest assured that you have enough to pay for a movie ticket and some popcorn. You leave home with $70 and when you get back home you can count it again and know that you spent some but still have $45 remaining. It’s elemental that way but surely we won’t be able to hold out when they put a chip in our foreheads and we just need to nod to record our payment on the way out the door.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.

There are people who just sit around making lists to put online. If you don’t already know it, the point of the posts is to get you to click on as many pages as possible, thereby exposing you to a ton of ads. You knew that right? I mean you knew it after the fifth time you got suckered into going through all those pages for nothing.

Just recently, the list that caught my attention was a list of concepts that baby boomers believed in, but subsequent generations will never understand. Intrigued, I went through the list (so that you would not have to…you’re welcome).

Numero uno on the list was Having loyalty to one employer. Not I, but many boomers took a job right out of college and retired from the same company. Gen Z job hoppers give it 2 years and move on.

Number two. Owning a home. Sadly, only 21% of millennials polled believe that will ever happen for them.

Number three. Phone calls vs texting. Girlfriends and boyfriends talked on the phone for hours. You had a sore ear when you finally hung up…no speaker phone button then. A quarter of 18 to 34 year olds say they never answer the phone. They are all Gen-Text.

Number four. Hard work? Or Work-Life balance. Boomers chose the former and younger generations, particularly Gen Z are not buying into it. If their employer doesn’t allow for a balanced lifestyle, they move on.

Number five. Marriage as a life goal. Boomers paired up early and often. In many cases, too early and too often. Younger generations may be okay with being with someone for life, but marriage – not so much.

Number six. Owning a car(s) was a big deal for boomers. It was our ticket to freedom and the ability to roam. Younger gens user ride-sharing apps and many have not bothered to get a license.

Number seven. Privacy versus sharing. Boomers are rather circumspect about their private lives while later generations find it totally normal to share their innermost life details to the point where we think they are oversharing. That’s not stopping them.

But that’s not all. Buying used instead of new. Respecting authority without question. Using television as their news source. Paying with cash. You can guess which side younger gens came down on without my dissection.

No, don’t thank me for saving you the trouble of reading another list. It was my pleasure.

Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His newest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.